For my culture and technology class today we were asked to write about everything we consumed yesterday and everything that consumed us. I became quite involved in my writing, and here it is:

I woke up and ate nutrigrain. I was struck by how they looked liked little bricks, a thought that I often think when eating this particular brand of cereal. This led to considering the idea of an artist creating a model house using nutrigrain as the bricks, and I began considering what other cereals could be used. Fruit loops as the door handles perhaps?

I didn’t have a lot in my bowl, which reminded me of how this guy I know once laughed at my cereal pour; quote, “that’s the tiniest amount of cereal I’ve ever seen someone pour.” What a dickhead. I usually go for a second bowl anyway.

For lunch I stood in front of the My Cuppa counter for about 10 minutes, trying to commit to something different from my usual turkey bagel. But in the end I gave up and just went with the damn turkey bagel anyway. I also purchased a “vegetable juice”, which is unusual for me, I usually go for an orange or apple juice. I’ve always liked tomato juice, and use to have them when my family and I stayed at a hotel and it was made available at the breakfast buffet. I guess I’ve always associated tomato juice with these times, and have been hesitant to have them any other time. But last weekend, I had a few cupfuls during work (I work behind a bar) so I suppose I’m breaking out of that mold.

Anyway, later I was still thirsty and purchased an apple juice (they do quench your thirst better) and specifically went for a brand my friend likes because it has a “random fact” under the bottle cap. In fact, I was having lunch with this friend and we’d been discussing her penchant for these facts and these bottles, so it would follow I had to purchase one. The fact was “Did you know Caterpillars have 3000 muscles, whereas humans only have 600?”

In the evening I got hungry pretty early, around 6pm. Unfortunately my mother had only started cooking dinner and it wasn’t going to be ready for another hour. I live half the week with my mum, the other half in the city with my brother (18yo). My brother and I don’t usually bother cooking and get take out, so it’s bliss to have lovely mum-home cooked meals. In fact, as I was upstairs, working away and getting hungrier the feeling was so familiar I felt very young, like a child.

When dinner is called to be ready, my brother (7yo), sister and I race downstairs excited to have mum’s delicious dinner. Sounds stupid and childish right? But hell, I’ll always cherish those feelings and will sustain them for as long as possible. Anyway, tonight we went down separately, I had been in the shower when dinner was called to be ready.

A meat pie was waiting for each of us, as well as peas and sausages still in the oven. As we ate our meat pies I, as always, burnt my tongue. I commented to my sister how i didn’t think I could remember a meat pie I had eaten without burning my tongue. She gave me a look of complete shock, “Really?” I didn’t realise what a ridiculous statement I had made and tried to soften it with, “Well maybe there’s been a few…but generally the gravy is always so hot.” I asked her if this was really such a strange thing, and she replied that she didn’t get the whole “hot gravy thing” as she thought it was fine and couldn’t understand why everyone goes on about it. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about everyone, as in everyone in the universe experiencing burnt-tongue-from-hot-gravy-in-meat-pie or just my brother and I. I told her maybe she had an “iron tongue” that was oblivious to hot gravy.

It also got me thinking about other foods that become unnaturally hot when heated. Well I say foods, but I mean food because I could only think of tomatoes. I tried to consider why they become so hot – is it their high water content? This brought lettuce to mind as I know that it has a high percentage of water – but they don’t seem to get very hot. But maybe it was the way the vegetable holds the fruit, like tomatoes really contain a lot of the water altogether.

After the meat pie was devoured, I moved onto the sausage and peas. Unfortunately the sauce bottle hadn’t much sauce left, just a bit right at the bottom. I started complaining and my sister impatiently replied, “don’t be silly, there’s plenty left,” taking the bottle from me and effectively doing fast downwards movements so the sauce was forced to move to the other end. Even though she’s in ninth grade, she’s can be very good at ordering you like this, and I replied “thanks mum” and added “can you drive me to the station tomorrow? pleeeease?” She replied with a curt, “no I can’t.”

On my second plate I had half a sausage and more peas, and declared, “I’m going to eat these peas one by one,” and proceeded to do so. But for some reason they didn’t taste very good like this, even though they were particularly juicy (and very green). My sister suggested another method, spearing each “spike” of the fork with peas so there was four little rows of peas, but this required far too much work for me to bother.

We were watching Law and Order at the time, a show we’ve been getting quite into, and our favourite “strand” of the show was on, the Special Victims Unit. You’d think it wouldn’t be a very good show to watch during dinner as it has quite a few gruesome looking bodies in it, and this was no different (the two victims suffering bludgeoning to death). But this didn’t really occur to us.

I finished everything on my plate, as is my habit. When my brother (18yo) and I traveled Mexico with a friend of mine, I was struck by the way he and I would always finish every single thing on the plate, no matter how full we were, something my friend didn’t – and something that most people don’t. I guess we were brought up doing this.

After this I debated as to whether I felt like some ice cream, and went with “yes.” My brother (7yo) also put up his hand for some, but I told him he couldn’t because he hadn’t had dinner properly (just half a pie.) He started complaining it was because his neck hurt, but then stopped mid-sentence because he realised this doesn’t explain why he was capable of having the ice cream, but not the dinner. Didn’t make much of a difference anyway because I assented by giving him a bowl. So we both had bowls of vanilla flavoured ice cream with some chocolate sauce.

Later on I brought up a glass of milk and a slice of cheese to eat, although I’m not sure why because I wasn’t particularly hungry. In fact I ended up feeling a bit guilty about this last one. Whatever.

Wow, who would have thought so much talk and thought would revolve around food? I guess food consumes me as much as I consume it.